ADVANCE Partnership: Strategic Partnership for Alignment of Community Engagement in STEM (SPACES)

Although research using community-engaged research (CER) methods is funding by several federal agencies, CER is still undervalued within the broader STEM discipline culture and often it is classified as “service” during STEM faculty annual review, tenure, and promotion processes. This project posits that this systemic undervaluation of CER contributes to the attrition of many faculty that identify as women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minority women (URMWF) who frequently enter Environmental Engineering (EnvE) motivated to address societally important problems.

This ADVANCE Partnership project titled “Strategic Partnership for Alignment of Community Engagement in STEM (SPACES)” will work to enhance the understanding and awareness of rigorous CER research and its value to the EnvE discipline and society, especially as conducted by URMWF. This project is a collaborative effort among 11 academic institutions, EnvE discipline’s primary professional societies (American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists, American Association for Aerosol Research, Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors, Water Environment Federation) and an NSF initiative focused on CER through the National Research Traineeship program.

SPACES will leverage the strength of the SPACES partnership, gains made in gender representation in EnvE, as well as the justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) initiatives underway in EnvE and public health. The project aims to produce a structural model, operationalized as an institutional scorecard, that will result in greater faculty success and professional progress for those conducting CER.

The scorecard will incorporate factors that shape trends related to the longevity and attrition of URMWF faculty in EnvE at the personal, disciplinary, and societal levels. The scorecard has potential to be used in other engineering disciplines. The project goals are to: (1) increase the retention and promotion of URMWF in EnvE; (2) transform the climate and infrastructure to support and value community-engaged research in the EnvE academic community; and (3) enhance understanding and awareness of CER research and its value to the EnvE discipline and society, especially as conducted by URMWF.

The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate.

ADVANCE "Partnership" awards provide support for the adaptation and adoption of evidence-based strategies to academic, non-profit institutions of higher education and non-academic, non-profit organizations.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.